Blog

After last week's conceptual history of
humanitarianism, we would like to comment on the current state of
humanitarian intervention and speak even more directly to the
conflict in Syria, in which Western military intervention has been
considered but rejected since it began more than two years ago.
Today, we look at how intervention and human suffering have changed
in the last decade since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

One of the great dilemmas of the Syrian
conflict is deciding whether or not the rebel forces are worth
supporting – and if the United States does support them, will they
be friendly after their inevitable American-backed victory. Some of
the rebels are known radical Islamists, like Jabhat al-Nusra,
and are too close to the ilk of al-Qaeda, Iran and other enemies of
American policy in the Middle East. American policy has been
wholeheartedly focused on hunting down terrorists since the attacks
of 9/11 more than a decade ago. To support radical Islamists now,
even against a dictator like Bashar al-Assad, would be a reactionary
and contradictory policy that could have unforeseen negative
consequences.

American policy was not always so
conflicted. Once the Soviet Union fell and the United States emerged
as the hegemonic power, American decision makers had the option
to dispose of resources to intervene or support a particular cause.
In the 1990s, they were effectively the custodians of intervention
and, as we mentioned last week, they spearheaded operations in
Somalia, the Balkans and elsewhere. The attacks on 9/11, however,
dramatically changed the United States’ poise. The amount of
resources funnelled into the war on terror, Iraq and Afghanistan—not
to mention an increasingly critical electorate—forced the US to
adopt a more reticent position. China, Russia, and others emerged as
economically powerful, yet democratically destitute, competitors on
the international stage. In a way, the American stance on Syria is
symptomatic of this shift in hegemonic structure. Syria has become a
proxy state in which the foreign policies of the United States, Iran,
and Russia are pitted against one another. Should the US side with
al-Assad’s regime, which has the obvious support of Iran, or should
the Americans support the Syrian opposition, of which “terrorists”
like Jabhat al-Nusra or others are a key part? This is at the
crux of the American dilemma.

The “War on Terror” emerged from a
truly traumatic experience for the United States. Even as a young,
politically oblivious Canadian, I understood that something changed
that morning. I was sitting in math class listening to my teacher
explain some form of calculus when our Vice Principal's voice came on
over the intercom saying planes had been flown into the World Trade
Centre in New York City. My friends and I were unphased. We were
old enough to know it was important (after all, there had been an
announcement about it), but neither old nor knowledgeable enough to
know why. A few hours later, as we crowded around television sets
with fellow students and teachers alike, it dawned on us that the
world was now a different place. Like all historical events, how
much it had changed would not be known for years as the consequences
played out. Even today, as the West hems and haws over action in
Syria and American policy seems to be “wait and hope it doesn't end
too badly,” we are still witnessing the long-term effects of those
attacks.

Are these Syrian rebels terrorists,
though? Since 9/11, the term terrorist has been a catch-all term for
any action against civilians and the state. The War on Terror was
quick to categorize enemies of the United States as terrorists to
avoid legal issues of prisoners of wars and mobilize public support
for action against them in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan,
and elsewhere. Any non-state actor demanding violent action against
the United States could be considered a terrorist. Other nations
quickly joined the “war.” The Americans conceded that Chechens
in Russia were also terrorists, rather than freedom fighters.
Palestinians too were far more easily lumped together and labelled as
terrorists, rather than compartmentalizing into Hamas and other
organizations. As Martin A. Miller notes, after 9/11 terrorism
became popularly associated only with “clandestine subsocial groups
using tactics of violence to achieve speciﬁc political goals.”
Now the broad strokes of the War on Terror impede US policy as they
try to distinguish the “good guys” and “bad guys” among the
rebels fighting against al-Assad’s dictatorship.

American interest in the Middle East
has been an uneven one. Nearly a decade after a war in Iraq for
“freedom” and “democracy,” it claimed a duty to support the
rebels in Libya, though it ignored the demands of other Arabs
demanding more freedom from their governments. The veneer of concern
about human suffering, which in the 21st century now
perhaps includes being unable to democratically elect a government,
is a thin one. American (and by extension, international) policy is
concerned more with the idea of alleviating suffering rather than the
practise of it. Syria is an excellent example of their continuing
struggle to play politics while speaking to morality. The
opportunity for the West to once again intervene militarily to end a
conflict is once again mired in political realities. The suffering
of human beings is, yet again, an integral justification of action
without being the primary motivation for it.